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Deconversion	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 23338 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 9
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Chapter Seven—Delicate Fangs

More Healers were coming towards him. Harry thought he would have known that even without the flowering of vivid sensation inside the bones of his head and ears as their footsteps thumped on the floors and their fists along the walls. He could make out the fear, like a scent and like a sight around him, so that he seemed to see new colors when he turned around.

He smiled. Then he winced and lifted his head. His front teeth still felt like fangs, and his cheeks squished and bent beneath his fingers in new ways. He swallowed, and felt something sharp and metallic in the back of his throat.

I have venom.

            He didn’t have time to be distressed by it, what with the concern about Malfoy behind him and the Healers that appeared in front of him. He was at the head of a staircase now, and it was all too obvious that the Healers intended to hold him at the top while they brought up more and more reinforcements from below. Even with his wand, Harry didn’t know that he could safely spring and land among them before they cast spells.

            But his wand wasn’t the only asset that he had now.

            He glanced up, and a snake of his desire appeared in the air above him, a snake such as Harry vaguely remembered reading about somewhere, with flaps of emerald-green skin spreading out from the sides. Those flaps let it glide from tree to tree, like a flying squirrel, or a dragon. This snake was bigger than the ones Harry had read about, of course, because he wanted it to be, and because that was what he needed it to be. He reached up a hand, and it was there, slipping beneath his fingers, smooth scales and flaring skin.

            Brother. Lord, said the snake, and turned its head so that its tongue danced along his fingertips. Tell me what you want me to do.

            Carry me over their heads and down into the midst of them, Harry said. He had thought about just escaping the Healers altogether, but so far, he didn’t think he had done anything scary enough to keep them from going after him. Instead, he would do something impressive but harmless, and he hoped that would be enough to convince them to back off. Over their spells. I’ll handle the other defensive parts.

            Of course, brother.

            The flying snake rolled back, rearing in midair, and Harry sprang and locked his hands around the body under the strips of skin. The snake flapped once, and then they were gliding straight down, towards the startled Healers. Beneath Harry came the white snake and the conjured vipers full of sleeping venom and a variety of other dancing snakes that he didn’t recognize. He didn’t know where they had come from, when they had joined him.

            As long as they did what he told them to do and no more, then it wouldn’t matter.

            A long, sleepy, rattling hiss rose from the snakes beneath him as they followed. Of course we will only do what you tell us, brother. We wish to obey you in all things.

            Harry licked his lips a little as he thought about that, and then he had no more time to think. They were down the stairs, and the flying snake gave a little wriggle of its tapered tail and dropped him straight into the middle of the Healers.

            Harry tucked in his legs and arms as he fell, letting his knees bend to take the shock of the landing, remembering his Auror training about falling from a height. Of course, most of the time such a landing wouldn’t have the softness of bodies to cushion it.

            He turned and hissed straight into the face of a Healer who was tangled beneath him and had been quicker than most of the others to reach for a wand. The Healer recoiled and lifted a hand in front of him as though that meant he could shield his eyes.

            Harry didn’t know whether his venom was a kind he could spit or not. And he didn’t try to find out. He ducked under the Healer’s raised arm and fought his way between them, waiting for the moment when someone would try to grab him.

            And of course it happened. There were some people who just couldn’t leave well enough alone, Harry thought. The hand curled around his ankle and held him, even when Harry kicked hard enough to break fingers.

            Harry turned and reached down, deep into himself, deep into a part of him that he hadn’t known was there and most likely would never have acknowledged if it wasn’t for Malfoy. He didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He only knew what he wanted done. He extended his fingers, and then spread them apart, and from between them came a rush of magic, grey-green and purple-red, throbbing so brilliantly that it seemed, at least to Harry, as though he cradled a beating heart.

            The magic struck the Healer holding him, and there was a complicated moment when wonder burned in Harry; he felt as he had when first walking into the Great Hall at Hogwarts and seeing the enchanted ceiling. Anything might happen, and the world would change from this moment forwards.

            The Healer cried out as his arms began to shrink and fade, retracting into his body. Scales rushed across his face, and his mouth and nose turned towards each other. Around his head flapped loose skin that Harry knew could grow into a hood easily. He was destining the Healer to become a cobra.

            And finally, finally, the other Healers pulled back with cries of disgust and tumbled into the far corners of the corridor, trembling, flinching from him, leaving him alone. Harry hadn’t wanted to frighten them all that much; he had only done it because it meant, absolutely, that his escape was assured.

            And they found him disgusting anyway. Harry jerked his hands out, along an invisible rope sliding between his fingers, and halted the Healer’s transformation. He turned his head in a slow circle, staring into the rapt eyes of those around him, and they flinched from him and hid their faces.

            “He’ll turn back once I’m free of hospital,” Harry said, not caring for the moment if he spoke in English or Parseltongue, and then lunged past the shattered remnants of their circle and began to run. The serpents followed him, flying along the ceiling, climbing the walls, tagging beside his ankles and hissing soft, gentle words about how clever and strong he was.

            Harry wondered if that was the real reason that so many Parselmouths had gone insane, because the praise had gone to their heads and they had begun to think that they could really do anything they wanted, with no limitation of power or morality.

            If that was the case, it was good that he was partnered with Malfoy, who would deflate his head when it wanted deflating.

*

            Draco had to close his eyes when he passed the half-transformed Healer and the signs of battle. The throb in his head and his chest and between his legs was getting harder to ignore.

            But he would have to ignore it for the moment. The Dark Arts was about nothing if not discipline.

            He opened his eyes and hurtled forwards, faster than he had been before. He was carrying Weasley’s cobra now; superior magical weapon or not, it couldn’t move as fast as he could. He rounded the final corner that, he thought, should carry him into sight of Potter.

            And yes, there Potter was, but standing as if hypnotized in front of a long, glittering wall of silver and gold. One of St. Mungo’s wards, Draco knew. He had donated himself to fix them when they had been broken shortly after the war by a group of former Death Eaters attacking hospital. His mother had been asleep in one of those beds at the time, and Dark wizards protected what was important to them, or they didn’t deserve the title.

            But because he had donated to them, he also knew some of the secrets of how to break them.

            “Not good at undoing defensive magic, your serpents?” he asked, as he strolled up beside Potter. He looked at him from the corner of one eye, and smiled as he saw more sleek shapes roiling around him like currents in a stew. If he kept this up, and they grew closer and Potter more comfortable with the Dark Arts in general, then Draco thought he should be able to see the snakes in detail someday.

            “This is the kind of magic that will kill them if it touches them,” Potter said, his eyes locked on the ward shimmering in front of them. He reached out one hand as though he would touch it, and then drew back. “I can feel that. It’s meant to kill any Dark magic.” He turned his head and locked those gorgeous eyes on Draco. “Which must mean that my snakes really are Dark magic. You were right.”

            Draco turned his head modestly aside—which he didn’t really feel but which would make him look good to Potter—and spent a moment studying the ward. Then he nodded. “We can do this,” he said, and drew the silver ball from his pocket.

            “What is that?” Potter swayed. Then he shook his head and looked at his legs as if they had betrayed him.

            “An artifact of great power,” Draco said, and smiled at him. “That you can feel it so clearly just means that you’re becoming more sensitive to magic. It’s nothing to regret.” He stepped forwards, and the ward reared up in front of him and spat a warning. Draco disregarded it. He had enough knowledge of both forms of magic to know that its apparent ability to destroy Dark wizards with a touch was only advertising.

            He held the ball up in front of him and clenched his fingers down on it. Small holes clicked open in the surface as the top layer of metal slid back. Draco turned his hand to the side and slid the ball up and down.

            Where it traveled, the ward vanished. Its magic flowed into the small holes, and the ball glowed and swelled with power. Draco could feel the complicated pressure in its depths changing the magic, altering its nature. By the time he had left the ball alone for a few days, it would have become pure, raw power, able to be used for Dark or light magic as the wizard who owned the ball decreed.

            He didn’t try to consume the whole of the ward. It would only terrify the people who came hunting them, and Draco wanted to force them into respect instead. He moved backwards and gestured courteously for Potter to precede him.

            Potter spent a long moment looking at him before he dived through. Draco strolled after him, turning his head so that he could admire the neat hole in the wards.

            Which was how he saw the Healer behind them who aimed his wand and spoke a single, choked curse.

            But not in time to do anything about it.

*

            Harry felt his shoulders coiling tighter and tenser as they came nearer and nearer to the exit. Surely something would happen, right now and here, to keep them from leaving? The Healers seemed to have pulled back and be willing to let them escape. Was it just they had seen that the cost of opposing them was too great?

            But he didn’t believe that, and when the white snake hissed and whipped around, Harry knew where the danger was coming from.

            He whirled around and launched the flying snake from his fist like a falcon. It glided down and through the hole in the ward, covering the arm of the Healer who stood there. For a moment, it glowed, lit from within, by the curse that he had been trying to hurl towards them. Harry knew, for that moment, a simple, fierce gladness that the curse had not managed to touch Malfoy.

            Then the snake and the curse vanished together.

            Harry staggered. The feeling of overwhelming loneliness and loss that worked its way through him had not been something he’d expected. He went to his knees, his arms wrapped around his head and his breathing shallow.

            Malfoy kicked him. Being assaulted by dragonhide boots hurt, but Harry didn’t get the chance to tell him so. As he turned to look, Malfoy grabbed his arms and hauled him up. He hissed into Harry’s face as though he was speaking Parseltongue, “I know it hurts, to have a part of you destroyed like that. But we’re not going to survive if we stay here. That means we have to move. Do you know what move means?”

            Harry jerked himself the rest of the way upright and nodded. Then he began to run again, directly towards the fireplaces this time, and didn’t look back. Malfoy was following him, and that was enough.

            His whole body was aflame with many things, multiple emotions, and he wasn’t sure which one would come roaring out if he opened his mouth right now. So all the better to wait until they were through the fireplace, and the whirling Floo motion had spat them out on Malfoy’s obviously expensive carpet.

*

            Draco stood up and dusted the soot off his arms, pinning each occurrence of the last five minutes flat under glass in his mind so that he could evaluate it.

            Yes, he had been too self-confident. He had thought they could escape from hospital without a single wound other than the ones Weasley had inflicted on him in their duel and the emotional ones Potter had taken from seeing his friends again. He had let his guard slip. Surely there must have been something he could have done to prevent the necessity of Potter’s sacrificing one of his snakes—which was exactly what happened, Draco did not doubt.

            When he came to that point in the evaluation, however, he broke the glass and let his emotions go free. He knew, better than anyone, how useless self-recrimination was. He had made a mistake, and would make sure that he did not make it again. That was not the same as going over the mistake again and again in his mind, and wondering how he could alter it. There was a reason he had never learned the time-travel spells that were also a part of the Dark Arts.

            He turned towards Potter and found him crouching on the floor, his head bowed and his breathing hurried as though he would faint. Draco reached behind him, found a glass of sweetened water standing ready where he had directed the house-elves to leave it, and mixed it with a Calming Draught from the store of potions carried on a secure belt around his waist. All the time, he watched the air around Potter, but could only make out the thick, pale gleam towards his feet that seemed to be the white snake that had accompanied him from the Dark paths.

            “Drink this,” Draco said, and crouched down to extend the glass of water.

            Potter reached up with his eyes glittering, and hissed out something incomprehensible. Draco shook his head. “I can’t understand you when you speak like that, which means the fine scolding you’re giving me is wasted,” he said.

            Potter drew himself up, gasped as though surfacing from deep water, and snapped, “You cost me a snake.”

            “I didn’t know that I would,” Draco said, which was the closest he would come to an apology, and thrust the glass more strongly at him. “You won’t get anything done, including revenge on me, if you lie there like a gutted fish.”

            Potter stared incredulously at him for a few seconds, and then lashed out his hand and took the water from Draco as though he wanted to spill it. He didn’t succeed; Draco’s grip on the side was too steady. After one more glare, Potter tipped the water down his throat. He coughed and spluttered and choked a minute later, and Draco had to smile in spite of himself. He watched, carefully, and then finally Potter turned away from him and blinked calmer eyes. Both pupils had achieved the same proportion, Draco noticed, neither exactly like a snake’s nor like a human’s.

            “I didn’t know they could die,” Potter whispered.

            Draco nodded. “That’s something I’d read about but never seen. But you saved my life, or at least my freedom, when it died. Thank you.”

            Potter glanced at him, blinking, as if he hadn’t realized that life-debts might be part of what lay between them now. Then he swallowed and nodded. “What are you carrying?” he added, staring at the cobra around Draco’s arm.

            Draco smiled and held it out. He hadn’t planned to do this, but he hadn’t planned for Potter to have to sacrifice one of his snakes, either. Perhaps this would fulfill the debt that it seemed he owed Potter, through no fault of his own. “Is he not wonderful? This is the kind of cobras that the Unspeakables are breeding now, the ones who are commanded to obey only the directions of one particular voice. Weasley was carrying it. I took it away from him and left him with the command not to oppose us anymore.”

*

            Harry started to meet Malfoy’s eyes and say something about how that was close to the Imperius Curse, and how he would never have wanted someone to do anything like that to his best friend—

            And then he closed his mouth, and swallowed, and looked at the cobra instead. Why was Ron coming after him for Parseltongue, when he fought with one of these?

            The cobra was a dark silvery snake, with its body sliding back and forth and gleaming like shadows whenever it turned its head. Harry reached out with one hand, and it opened its mouth and showed its fangs. Harry blinked, pulled his hand back, and tried Parseltongue instead, wondering if the spell that Malfoy had used on Ron had commanded the cobra to listen to him, too.

            “What are you like?”

            The cobra writhed and shut its mouth, then gave a low, agitated hiss that Harry couldn’t understand. Then it turned and looked up at Malfoy. Yes, he had cast the spell that gave him control over it, Harry decided.

            “You may obey him,” Malfoy told the snake, and spent a moment touching the sleek back before he extended his arm to Harry again. “But I would like to retain some control for study purposes.”

            Harry took a deep breath as the emotions in him tilted and found another outlet. “That’s the only reason you decided to rescue me, isn’t it? Not all the rot about how I should learn to control myself and how there should be more Dark wizards in the world. You want to study me, and see how I react to your spells.”

            Malfoy smiled at him. “I admit that was part of it. But if I’d left you there, you would be mad or dead by now, so I think I deserve some thanks, and my motive might not matter as much as you think it does.”

            Harry shook his head. He didn’t think he could speak. “I didn’t—I mean,” he said, and bowed his head. Yes, he could speak, but the words that he forced past the block in his throat made no sense. He was actually grateful for the Calming Draught, because although the effect wasn’t that great, he didn’t think he would have been able to make sense at all without it. “You fought Ron,” he said.

            Malfoy nodded. “And I am debating whether I should tell you what he said or not, because while it might predispose you to my side, it could also upset your mental balance. And that is the last thing we need right now.”

            Harry smiled at him, and felt the venom stir in his cheeks. “Because I’m so close to losing it already?”

            “Yes,” Malfoy said, with a calm candidness that made Harry blink and feel as if the venom was retreating a little from the surface of his skin. “But also because I think that he is simply prejudiced against someone who can hurt others effortlessly, the way you can. If you corrected that mistaken prejudice, perhaps he would help us. I issued a mental command that he cannot fight us, at least.”

            Harry took another breath, and the world reeled inside his head again. He sat down and closed his eyes, concentrating on the feel of the smooth surface of the chair under him. St. Mungo’s had had no furniture half so comfortable; sometimes Harry thought he had slept there only because he had nothing else to do.

            Then he opened his eyes and said, “Will you tell me why you would welcome his interference? What exactly are your plans?”

*

            Draco smiled. He couldn’t help it. Lingering pain in his head and ribs or not, the world sang around him, and Potter was a large part of the reason why. He didn’t want the surge of blood in his veins or of plans in his head to slow yet.

            And now Potter might go along with this. Draco deposited the snake in Potter’s lap and moved a few steps away. When he paced like this, with the world spinning along, he might easily fling the cobra from his arm.

            “I want to make the Dark Arts a legitimate practice in Britain again,” he said. “The way it is on the Continent. I want those who have the strength for it to confront that strength, instead of retreating because they fear it.”

            He turned back to see Potter staring at him above the cobra’s head. The cobra was tasting Potter’s wrist with a gentle tongue, as if wondering whether it wanted to obey someone who could speak to it in its own language. But Potter shook his head in the next instant, and his eyes narrowed. “Funny, Malfoy.”



“It may sound that way to you,” Draco said simply. “But it is my great ambition, and I see no reason why I should disguise that from you.”

Potter shut his eyes, opened them again. Then he said, “If you’re interested in that, why would you want me to speak with Ron and Hermione and try to persuade them around to my side again?”

            Draco couldn’t help it. He moved forwards and knelt in front of Potter the way he had in the hospital room, his fingers playing lightly along Potter’s wrist. Potter tried to pull away, but this time, Draco insisted on maintaining the contact, and not even the threatening swirls of light he saw from the corners of his eyes or the way that the cobra eased forwards, smooth as oil in water, could deter him.

            “That’s part of it,” he said softly. “Why do they fear you? For no rational reason. I even tried to speak to Weasley about that, to point out that you are hardly the sort of man one would expect to become a mad Dark Lord intent on killing people. He denied that you could be anything else.” Potter’s pulse leaped beneath his touch, and Draco dipped his head and rested his cheek against the skin for a moment. Potter might sometimes need the touch of a human, and not only a snake. “That is his fear talking. Not his courage, not his loyalty, not his affection for you. His fear.”

            “And you despise cowards,” Potter said in a musing tone, his eyes fastened on Draco’s face.

            Draco reached his hand up to slide along Potter’s cheek, to feel the swelling there and the way that his jaw had begun to narrow and turn triangular. “Yes. I was one once, and I could not begin to master the Dark Arts until I left that behind. And someone as faithful to you as Weasley can begin to turn away from you because of his own cowardice. The Dark Arts scare him, not you. The old tales of Parselmouths, not you. The same with Granger. In this case, research would not help her, because most of the books on Parseltongue were written by those who feared Salazar Slytherin. And I’m sure she’s passed that venom along to Weasley, pouring his ears full of poison that helps no one. You aren’t evil, Potter. They don’t really believe you are—or they wouldn’t if they paused to think about it for one moment. But we must counteract that. I don’t intend to hide in any traditional way. I intend for us to make ourselves invulnerable for the moment, and then move. Take the fight for the Dark Arts into the open.”

            Potter sat back and gaped at him. Draco smiled. That was happening a lot lately. It was very satisfying.

            “That’s the reason I want them on our side,” he whispered into Potter’s face, standing up and leaning in. “Because your side is mine, now, and anyone that can be turned away from their irrational fear is an ally.”

            Potter closed his eyes, blinked them open. Then he swallowed and said, “Malfoy, this is—overwhelming. I think I need some food and sleep before I think about it again.”

            Draco nodded and clapped to summon his house-elves. “Of course. Do think about it. The softest beds and the most luxurious foods are yours.”

            Potter staggered up and out of the room, accompanied by the cobra and the swirling mist that was probably his serpents. Draco closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting his throat strain to hold back the howl that wanted to rise.

            Then he went to firecall Pansy. Because he was winning, and he wanted someone to share in the triumph, right here, right now.

*

            suicidein_angeleyes: Thank you! Harry isn’t transforming quite yet, but he is having some physical changes happening that could carry him in that direction.

            moodysavage: Thanks! Harry let Draco fight Ron mostly because he didn’t think he was up to facing him right that moment.

            Talltree-san: Ron mostly thinks that Harry is dangerous because he thinks all Parselmouths are. Harry may be able to convince him otherwise.
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